South Africa expects to connect two new coal power plants by 2021

South Africa expects to connect two privately-built coal-fired power plants to the grid by around 2021, the energy minister said on Wednesday as government pushes to overcome a chronic power shortage.

“In the next quarter we will announce the preferred bidders for the first tranche of the allocated 2,500 megawatts of the coal component of the independent power producer programme,” energy minister Tina Joemat-Pettersson told parliament.

She added that a new gas-to-power programme was expected to lead to investment of around 64 billion rand ($4 billion) over the next four to five years.